The first drop would hold the secrets of where he had come from, the second of where he was in the present, the third of where he needed to go.

This was the message the sorceress Ceridwen had received from her oracle, the Pheryllt, a book of immense size with more words packed together within its pages than anyone else in the country had ever seen. Mining the depths of the information it contained, she could discover the solution to any problem she faced.

In this case, the problem that she faced was her own son, Morfran. She had dreamed of sending him to Camelot to become one a knight of the Round Table, but the way he had turned out, she couldn’t imagine him ever being accepted by King Arthur.

The boy was hideous to look at. Even Ceridwen had to admit that. His face was like that of a wild animal, as was the coarse hair that grew all over his body. His voice sounded more like the croaking of a raven than that of a human being, and whatever he said seemed to be complete nonsense.

What Ceridwen didn’t know was that Morfran had been cursed by one of her rivals. He had a mind as beautiful as his appearance was ugly, and he composed brilliant verses representing wonderful ideas in clever form. However, under the dark spell cast against him, anything he said would be heard, understood, and then forgotten in an instant, replaced in their ears with seeming gibberish. So horrible had Morfran become as he grew that people in the court of Ceridwen had ceased even to speak of him by name, but only referred to him by the nickname Afagddu, Welsh for Utter Darkness.

Ceridwen refused to accept his condition. Consulting the Pheryllt, she learned of a way to magically move him from his current state into a beautiful, articulate and magically gifted young man.

Such a thorough transformation wouldn’t come easily, of course. To create the magical potion to give to Morfran, Ceridwen would have to gather all the right ingredients, and cook them in a cauldron for an entire year. What’s more, only three drops of the potion would provide the desired effect. The rest of the brew would be a fatal poison.

A further difficulty was that Ceridwen couldn’t take an entire year to devote to this single task. She was an important noblewoman, wife of a big man, the Lord Tegid Foel. So, she outsourced the labor to a pair of nobodies: Morda, a blind old man too feeble to stand, and Gwion Bach, a young boy from a poor family with no social connections worthy of notice. While Morda kept the fire under the cauldron blazing, Gwion’s job would be to continually stir the pot to prevent any portion of the potion from burning.

Gwion and Morda persevered in their duties for an entire year, but on the day when Ceridwen was to gather three drops of magic to bring to Morfran, a large bubble began to form at the surface of the liquid. As the boy leaned over the cauldron to take a closer look, the bubble burst, sending three drops onto the back of his hand. Without thinking, Gwion brought his hand to his mouth to cool the burn, and in doing so, sucked the entire magical essence of the potion into his body.

Instantly, all the brilliance and power that Ceridwen had sought for Morfran was given to Gwion. He found that he could see understand the past with more clarity, perceive present events beyond his immediate senses, and even grasp knowledge of the future. It all came to him with astonishing speed, as easily as taking in a breath of air.

The first thing that Gwion understood with his new insight was that Ceridwen was on her way, and she would be furious. So, he abandoned his work, and began to run. Aiming for a hedge at the boundary of Tegid Foel’s compound, he bent low to the ground to obscure the view of any pursuers.

“I’m nearly running on all fours,” he thought, “like a rabbit.”

As soon as the idea occurred to him, he found his arms extending, his thighs swelling, his ears stretching out behind him as he moved forward. He was, in fact, becoming a rabbit, using the potion’s powers of transformation for the first time. Faster than he had ever run before, he sped away into the brambles at the edge of the forest.

Not seeing what had happened, Morda kept adding wood to the fire, but without being stirred, the potion was beginning to thicken at the bottom of the cauldron, and held the heat of the flame in new, uneven ways. The imbalance grew until the cauldron cracked, and its contents flowed down into a nearby lake.

This leaked remainder of the potion was so toxic that when Gwyddno Garanhir, a neighboring king, stopped to water his horses at the river ten miles downstream an hour later, they all immediately dropped dead.

When Ceridwen arrived, she understood right away what had happened, and she knew who to blame. Gwion was not the only one with magical powers of perception and transformation, however. using her own gifts, Ceridwen saw where the boy had gone, and what he had become. Responding instantly, she changed herself into a greyhound and bolted into the forest, following the trail of scent Gwion had left behind.

She found him at the edge of a river, taking a drink of water to refresh himself. She was nearly upon him before he saw her. “I wish I could jump in the river to escape her,” he thought, and so he did, not as a rabbit, but as a salmon, swimming with the current down toward the sea.

Ceridwen was not so easily eluded, however. She changed herself into an otter, and as fast as Gwion’s salmon swam, she was faster. At the edge of a waterfall, he felt her sharp claws feeling for his curved tail fin, and he leaped into the air.

“If only I could keep flying like this,” Gwion thought, and he did, changing into a wren soaring above the water.

Ceridwen changed shape to match him, becoming a falcon, beating its wings to rise up into the air. Turning, she saw her prey far below. She folded her wings tight to her body, and plummeted toward him at terrifying speed.

Gwion heard her shriek of excitement, though, and looking below him he saw a farmyard full of chickens pecking at the scattered grain left over from the harvest. Wanting nothing more than to disappear, he transformed himself into a single grain of barley, and floated down to the ground to hide amongst the other seeds.

Ceridwen floated down after him, not as a falcon, but as a gigantic black hen, frightening all the other chickens away. Patiently, she scoured the farmyard, pecking up every single piece of grain, swallowing them with great hunger.

So it was that Gwion was finally consumed by Ceridwen, reduced to chicken feed. Her vengeance satisfied, Ceridwen changed back into her human form and began the long walk back to her estate.

Despite appearances, Gwion was not defeated.

Nine months after Gwion in the form of a grain of barley was consumed by the sorceress, Ceridwen gave birth to a boy whom she was certain was none other than Gwion Bach. For her entire pregnancy, she was determined to kill the baby, to finally accomplish the revenge she had begun the previous year.

When her new son was born, however, his identity as Gwion was simultaneously confirmed and preserved by his great beauty and wise eyes full of the understanding of one who had known and mastered magic long ago. During his gestation, Gwion’s powers had grown along with his new body, and as Ceridwen held a long sharp knife across the baby’s throat, the most delicious golden light emerged from within his face. Ceridwen gasped, dropped the knife, and was charmed. She was holding the fruition of her own magic in her hands.

Ceridwen could not bring herself to kill the baby, but her anger at the theft of her spell remained. So, she decided to abandon Gwion Bach to his fate on the waves of the Irish Sea. She placed him inside a leather bag, and cast the bag into the sea.

For nine days and nights, the baby in the bag floated on the salty waters, until Halloween arrived.

It was known in those times that Halloween was a day when fortunes might be reversed, when those who had bad luck might find a path into a more prosperous future. In particular, the people along the coastline believed that those who fished for salmon on Halloween would gather the best catch of the year.

So it was that Gwyddno Garanhir, still brooding from the poisoning of his finest horses, sent his son, Prince Elphin to tend the fish weirs along his coastline on the last day of October. Elphin was well-meaning, but every project that he touched turned to disaster, and his father worried what would become of the kingdom after his death. “Perhaps you will at least bring the people an ample meal, if you cannot serve them in court,” Garanhir told his son, and dismissed him.

All day and all night, Elphin wandered between the weirs, but found not even one fish. Only with the light of breaking dawn did he discover one catch: A leather bag snagged on one of his father’s traps.

Elphin opened the bag, hoping to find money or an object of worth that he could sell at market, but instead found a baby with a face that shone like a cloud barely concealing the sun. Although it was clearly newborn, the baby spoke with a clear voice. “Prince Elphin, your worries may now cease. Do not be dissatisfied with your catch, for despair brings no advantage, and no one can see the true source of success.”

When Elphin arrived back at the castle, he hid the baby in his cloak, unsure of what others might think to see him with an infant in his arms. Thus, walking into the court, he earned the curiosity of all his father’s advisors.

“What have you brought me?” asked Gwyddno Garanhir.

“I caught no fish,” the prince admitted, “but something better.”

His father groaned. “Show me what you have,” he demanded.

So, Elphin unwrapped his cloak and showed the baby. The court erupted into laughter, and Garanhir hid his face in his hands.

“The depth of your ill fortune was never seen until now,” the king groaned. “Every year, we have had three days feasting from weirs at Halloween, but now we shall go hungry, thanks to your distraction with this baby, wherever it may have come from.”

Ignoring the uproar, Elphin lowered the baby to the floor, and it stood upon its thick legs, and walked forward across the cold stone to the feet of the king, silencing the entire court. Without a stitch of clothing on, the child stared into the eyes of the king, and declared in a voice that could be heard by all, “Though I am small, you shall find strength in me. On the foaming beach of the ocean, in the day of trouble, I shall be of more service to you than three thousand salmon, and I shall profit you more than any trap.”

Then, from the baby’s forehead came a light so intense that it filled all the room that made it feel as if they were on a hilltop at noon on a summer day, and not in late autumn within the shadow of castle walls.

“Let him be named Taliesin,” said Garanhir, lifting the baby into his arms, “after the brilliance of his shining brow.”

From that day forward, Taliesin served as the top advisor to Gwyddno Garanhir, and to Elphin. He grew to become the greatest bard that England had ever seen, and ever would see, advising all the great leaders of his day, including even King Arthur, sitting at the Round Table.

Taliesin alone was unsurprised on the day when he saw, riding a gigantic steed through the gates of Camelot, Morfran the Utter Darkness, the other son of Ceridwen. Morfran had not only been invested with the honor of a knight of the Round Table, but was one of a special trio, the Irresistible Knights, named so because they could be refused nothing they asked for. Morfran had not become a member of the Irresistible Knights in spite of his awkward ugliness, but because of it, and had attained this status with no magical assistance from his mother whatsoever.

Years later, after the Battle of Camlan, in which King Arthur was killed by his bastard son Mordred, the Irresistible Knights were the only members of the Round Table to survive. It was Morfran who first committed the stories of Camelot to writing.

As for Taliesin, after that day, he was never seen again, at least not in the shape of a bard.